


with love from books haunted, xoxo

by sensibleshroom



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s04e07 Darkness on Umbara, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Midoriya Izuku Has a Quirk, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parental Snipe (My Hero Academia), Pong Krell (derogatory), Snipe is tired, i wish a pong krell a very happy, keep asking for shit on tumblr, this is what you get, you know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-28 00:07:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30130977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensibleshroom/pseuds/sensibleshroom
Summary: Izuku Midoriya had always known his life was an unholy hellhole. He had the most coveted quirk on the planet, had been a child soldier now on two separate occasions, the One Ring of Power around his neck to continuously wrangle into behaving, more tinkering projects than he could feasibly ever finish, which was a whole other flavor of the day to day anxiety, trauma, so much trauma, and now...And now he was stuck in Star Wars. And trying to explain why he hell he's in the middle of an active war zone.And he wasn't going to be going home, and his uncle was missing.He would kill a man to take a nap, and, well. Pong Krell is there.
Relationships: Midoriya Izuku & Snipe
Comments: 33
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> here's to low engagement, nonnie. that was absolutely something i worried about when i switched fandoms. thank you.

“SlipStep, you need to  _ get out of there! I don’t have a shot! _ ” Asuma shouted into Izuku’s comm, and he spun to the side, spun the sword in his hand around, and smashed the flat of it across the villain’s face. The man went stumbling back, and Izuku ducked into the meadow, the scent of flowers washing over him, and spun back out with a smack of the blade to the man’s shin, the rubber strips along the edge leaving what was going to turn into a deep welt.

“Pulling back!” Izuku called, taking two steps back and into the meadow. More villains were converging on their location, and this was all getting hilariously out of control. With a  _ tug, _ he appeared next to his uncle on the rooftop, panting lightly as sweat beaded under his visor.

“You need to have a faster response time than that,” Asuma admonished him, and Izuku glared at him under the visor.

“You can literally make any shot, don’t give me that,” he said and stared down at the chaos in the streets. “Where and Eraserhead and Ground Zero?”

“They’re on their way,” Asuma said as he adjusted his scope. “You were about to get piled on.”

“Is the Hero Commission aware we’re  _ heroes, _ not soldiers?” Izuku asked, irritation snapping at his heels as he angrily shoved the sword into his cloak. The meadow swallowed it up, and he sent out a command on his vambrace for the droids to return to him.

“We are what we need to be, Izuku,” Asuma said quietly, and Izuku snorted.

“The Liberation Front was  _ bad enough, _ we aren’t---”

“Izuku,” Asuma said softly, and his voice cracked slightly. Izuku fell silent and looked down at the burning and trashed streets.

“At least it hasn’t hit the hospital yet,” he said and looked into the distance, where Inko was working in the trauma ward, and she wasn’t going to be coming home tonight. They might not be, either.

_ “She approaches,” _ Gremlin hissed, thrumming against his chest, and Izuku spun, hand already reaching into his cloak to pull out whatever he had on hand---

Flaming sword? Fine.

With a hiss, the flames ignited, and Asuma spun with Izuku, sniper rifle lifted and leveled on the chest of a woman leaning against the doorway to the roof.

“You boys sound tired,” she said, dark eyes glinting in the low light, and Izuku leveled the sword on her.

“Who are you?” He asked, and his eyes caught on a bag tied to her hip, seemingly one card between her fingers.

“SlipStep. Snipe,” she said casually as she pushed herself off the doorway, tall and shapely and  _ screaming _ that she was dangerous. “That’s not a very heroic welcome.”

“Call it a sixth sense,” Izuku said as he thought on how to outmaneuver, and she flicked the card around to show off some intricate artwork. Tarot cards. That wasn’t ominous at all with a strange woman on an abandoned roof in the middle of a war.

“The Fool,” she said, and twitched her fingers to split the cards. “Emperor.” Another twitch of her fingers, and a third card appeared. “Devil.”

“What?” Izuku asked as he took a step back.

“New beginnings. Stability. Entrapment,” she said, patient, and Izuku glanced at Asuma, who was unreadable behind his mask.

“Don’t come any closer,” Asuma said, and she flicked the cards out even further.

“SlipStep has been a problem, hasn’t he?” She asked conversationally. “Too smart. Too fast. Shigaraki wants his quirk, but my employer doesn’t want him to have it, and would you believe it, you  _ can _ extract a quirk from a dead body. Nasty business, but it can be done.”

“I am ordering you to stand down,” Asuma said, his finger twitching like it wanted to land on the trigger, and Izuku had a bad feeling about this.

“Something has to be done about it,” she said, and didn’t move. A twist of her lips, and Izuku caught sight of a slightly crooked canine, not unlike a fang, protruding from the rest of her mouth, and somehow that made everything even worse. Red hair was swept over her shoulder, and she lazily snapped out her wrist, so the cards were held aloft. “Izuku Midoriya. How would you like to meet the devil?”

“I wouldn’t, personally,” Izuku forced out, and she laughed.

“That’s unfortunate,” she said, and the cards  _ caught fire. _ “Have a good trip.”

The roof shuddered, and something swelled, something deadly and dangerous, and Izuku felt ozone on his tongue. The ground  _ buckled, _ and Asuma’s feet went out from under him.

**_BOOM._ **

Some force shoved them back, and Izuku yelped as Asuma pitched over the edge of the building, a shot blaring out.

_ “Do not!” _ Gremlin screamed, but Izuku was beyond listening as the ring on the chain thumped against his body armor. Without even a thought, Izuku launched himself off the building, having long overcome his fear of heights, and with a desperate lunge, he wrapped his fingers around Asuma’s cloak.

_ Fire. _

Izuku was used to the scent of the flowers rushing over him, but now he smelled  _ smoke _ and  _ ash, _ and rather than the tug of the meadow, he felt the shove of something else, flowers and grass melting around him as he caught sight of his library, his workshop, and they smashed into the river as the world flickered. It was split second choice, but something was  _ wrong _ with the meadow, and the panic response told Izuku to get Asuma and him  _ out. _

Something cracked, and the water tasted like blood in the mouth. A current swept them under, and the water  _ boiled _ into rapids, rapids that  _ didn’t exist in his meadow, _ and Izuku felt like something was being pried from dead fingers, slowly and painfully, and a scream worked up as his body felt like it was on  _ fire. _ The swirling stars that made his sky nowadays fractured, and started to fall apart, sheets of paper with bleeding words catching in the roiling waves, and everything smelled like salt and sulfur, horrifying and scalding his lungs, and he lost hold of his uncle for one terrifying second, but the warm flesh of his uncle’s bare arm met him, and Izuku  _ screamed _ as he forced his quirk to activate one last time.

They were  _ wrenched _ out, not gentle, not like his meadow was, not soft, with that tug of childish excitement that had never left it, even after all of this time, after all of this pain. No, it felt like Izuku was being  _ ripped apart, _ and it wasn’t in milliseconds. Not this time. His hat was gone, somewhere, his mask was nearly off, and it felt like his very  _ identity _ was being ripped apart as the stars and galaxy and something unknowable and vast ripped past them. There was a scream, a cosmic scream that sprang right out of a Lovecraftian novel, and Izuku couldn’t even remotely understand what he was seeing, what he was experiencing, but it felt like the scream was tearing his soul into pieces.

_ “Fight!” _ Gremlin screamed, and Asuma was  _ gone, _ the vast unknown ripping him away from Izuku, and Izuku screamed as he felt his body cease to exist, be reborn, over and over, and it felt  _ just _ like I-Island, in all of the worst possible ways, and he screamed as Gremlin lit on  _ fire, _ searing his skin, breaking his promise as he used every inch of his accursed cosmic powers to keep Izuku together.  _ “Fight, Izuku!” _

Izuku felt like he was battling something unknowable, something so chaotic and cruel and  _ alive, _ a breath he had heard his whole life and never noticed, a pulse he had skimmed over and forgotten, because it was too much to know, too much to comprehend, and he couldn’t, he couldn’t do it.

_ “I did not survive to see you die! Fight!” _ Gremlin howled, and Izuku felt a scream rip out of him, out of the body that no longer existed, out of the soul that he had never touched, but he knew, and it was…

**_“FIGHT!”_ ** Gremlin screamed, and suddenly it was all Izuku could do, fighting. He was torn to shreds, but wasn’t that what it meant to be  _ alive? _

_ Fight. _

Izuku had never known how to do anything else.

Something sweet and kind and endless reached to him, cradled him in its grasp, and suddenly Izuku was  _ whole, _ and crashing through dirt and plants, flipping over and over through the sound of blasters and explosions, and there were cries as the world  _ shuddered, _ and a scream of a falling mortar, an aerial bombardment, and…

_ Smack. _

He slammed into a tree, slumped down, pain lighting up every nerve, and Gremlin screamed in an endless litany of mottled black speech and Japanese, and Izuku rolled over to see a deep purple sky laced in smoke, and…

A familiar white and blue helmet stared down at him, the barrel of a blaster he had once made himself pointed at his face, and consciousness was no more.


	2. Chapter 2

Asuma Hazutashi thought he was accustomed to pain. He really did, but this was not something he had ever encountered before.

The collision with the ground was painful. Every nerve in his body was on fire, and he dimly registered he was screaming in agony as he hit the dirt and slid through. There was blaster fire, he knew that was blaster fire, Izuku  _ loved _ those DC-17s of his, all around him, and it was only years of hard training and pushing through of sheer agony that left him conscious. Something hit him over the head, fracturing the gas mask, and he felt his hat go flying, but he was a  _ pro. _

There was barely a thought that registered beyond  _ instincts, survive, survive _ as he rolled through dust, and he barely noticed the sound of a lightsaber deflecting blaster bolts. His body slammed into a limp, armored body, and he ripped off his fractured mask to get a good visual.

Pain. Pain, pain, pain, but those were…

_ Droids? _

There was a man, two men, standing there, and Asuma remembered a show he watched with Izuku, over and over, a comfort show Izuku adored, that had fallen off in his heart as war became more and more real.

One of them had hardened skin and horns protruding from his head, and Asuma realized in a moment that this was…

He didn’t remember the name of the Jedi, but that was Captain Keeli. Izuku had cried over Captain Keeli, a lot. He was still learning English, but he had devoured any fanfiction he could find about the minor character, and the thought struck something in Asuma’s gut as he reached out for a gun, anything, anything at all that he could use, and his hand landed on a blaster that he had only ever used in Izuku’s meadow, but…

With a gasp, he sat up and reached for his quirk. The familiar  _ knowing _ enveloped him, and he aimed, squeezed the trigger.

A bolt shot out, and split into dozens of points that swirled and danced through the air, twisting and splitting to slam through droid heads and processing units, and he only  _ knew _ that because of hours spent doing grunt work for Izuku in the workshop, he wasn’t even  _ aiming, _ just panicking, and…

A long, awkward silence stretched out as Asuma sat there, panting, and the clone and Jedi slowly turned to face him, sopping wet and  _ hurting, _ burning, he was on fire, and every droid dropped in a heap. Crashes rang out, and Asuma stared at the two characters, lips parted under his mask, and the band around his dreads just… snapped.

It was too much. The pain ricocheted down his spine, down to his fingers and toes, and he promptly fell over as the captain started to run towards him.

“Sir,” the clone said in English, oh, Basic was English, Asuma’s English wasn’t great---

Black.

* * *

Keeli stared in dumbfounded silence at the completely unconscious Human man on the ground, and then slowly turned to look at the droids he had single handedly wiped out with two blaster bolts. He’d seen the man appear out of  _ nowhere, _ hit the ground and slide and slam into Forro’s body, but…

He was sopping wet. And unconscious. In the middle of a desert.

General Di slowly walked over and stared down in mute silence at the man, before kneeling down to press a hand to the pulse point at his neck.

“Alive,” he said, and Keeli had been around him enough to pick up that slight color of confusion in his tone.

“Is he Force sensitive?” Keeli asked in confusion, because he knew sure as  _ hell _ blaster bolts did not separate like whistling birds, and the general shook his head no.

“He’s not,” he said and slowly looked around the bodies on the ground as Keeli realized his… entire company had been wiped out.

It ached, and the grief hit him in the chest, because some of them were  _ shinies. _ Shinies that had almost made it. He wanted to fall to the ground, to sob, because they were all dead around him, and he had just been miraculously rescued, but whoever this man was was just a few seconds too late, and Keeli wanted to be sick.

_ “This is Republic blockade runner Oh-Niner-Niner,” _ General Di’s comm went off, and Keeli and the general looked up in unison as ships tore over them.  _ “We have broken through.” _

The ships sped past them, and General Di had taken a hit to the gut, and Keeli to the shoulder, and there were bodies all around them, droid and man, sentient and just slightly to the left, and Keeli wanted to  _ sob. _

Seconds too late. And here he was. Alive, with a civilian, maybe, to take care of, and dead brothers, watching ships tear over them to save freedom fighters who were dying, too, and he just…

“Tremors is alive,” General Di said, and limped over to the shiny medic on the ground, gripping at his side, and fell to his knees, and Keeli took a shuddering breath.

Tremors was alive.

And so was the man.

Keeli slowly fell down next to him, sat down, and pawed at him to try and find the injury that had taken him out, but there was nothing. Carefully, he peeled off the cracked mask on his face, and just…

Stopped.

Dark skin, full lips, a broad nose and high brow, curling facial hair, neatly trimmed, with sharp cheekbones, and Keeli registered all of that and moved right on for checking for a concussion. His fingers reached forward to peel his eyes open, and nothing. At all. Richly brown eyes, but they weren’t even remotely dilated, he was just unconscious.

“Sir,” Keeli called, and turned to look as Ima-Gun lifted Tremors up in his arms.  _ “Sir.” _

He hadn’t even patched the blaster wound.

“We have to regroup with the Twi’leks,” Ima-Gun said, Tremors’s med pack slung over his shoulder as he hefted the fully armored, unconscious vod in his arms. “Are you able to carry our mysterious savior?”

“Sir, you have a hole in your gut,” Keeli said evenly, and Ima-Gun, he was  _ not _ the general right now, tilted his head.

“I do. And this position is unsafe. The supplies are delivered. We have to move.”

“Can we take a few seconds to patch it?” Keeli asked patiently, and Ima-Gun paused, like he hadn’t considered that.

“Well… Our friend did deal with the current problem handily,” Ima-Gun decided, and carefully laid Tremors down before dropping the med kit on the ground. “With haste, Captain.”

“Do you know how he’s…” Keeli trailed off and looked down at the man on the ground, still definitely unconscious, wet, half drowned, and Ima-Gun looked over at him for a long moment as he flipped open the bag.

“... Nothing we can help with,” Ima-Gun said, and reached into the kit to pull out bacta bandages. Carefully, he removed Tremor’s helmet, with every inch of reverence he had, to reveal a bleeding head. A small bacta patch was smoothed over his forehead with tender care, and then Ima-Gun was peeling open his robes to plaster on a patch marked for a Nikto over the blaster hole. He didn’t even flinch, only gestured for Keeli to approach. “Let me see your shoulder, Captain.”

Keeli glanced down at the man before he leaned over and picked up the mask, clipped it to his belt. Carefully, he shifted him over, and the man twitched with a tiny moan of discomfort.

“What’s wrong with him?” He asked, and Ima-Gun paused again.

“He’s in pain,” Ima-Gun replied. “I’m not sure  _ how, _ but he… Come here and let me patch your shoulder.”

Keeli obeyed, already peeling off his pauldron and stripping off what armor would block Ima-Gun from reaching him. The pieces of armor unclipped, and he sat patiently while Ima-Gun inspected the burn on his shoulder, burrowing in by several inches, and then the Jedi Master smoothed on a bacta patch. In an instant, the relief hit Keeli, a coolness spreading over his shoulder, and he picked up his cuirass as he zipped up the blacks with one hand.

“Is Tremors hit anywhere else?” He asked as he looked down at the shiny, smooth-faced shiny, and Ima-Gun shook his head.

“No, but he will be concussed,” he said and slid his helmet back on, picked him up. “Are you able to carry the civilian?”

“Yessir,” Keeli said, and finished gearing up. His shoulder was aching, but it was a single blaster bolt, and he’d had worse. The man wasn’t that large, anyways. He was at least three inches shorter than Keeli, if that, maybe even four, and it would be a piece of cake to carry him off. Even if he  _ did _ look like a solid block of muscle.

Carefully, because he was  _ clearly _ in pain, Keeli shifted him so he could scoop his legs and brace him to his chest. With a heft, and twin groans of pain, from Keeli and the stranger both, Keeli staggered to his feet, a variety of confusing scents hitting his unblocked nose. Flowers, wet ash, blood, but he wasn’t bleeding. Something that stank of ozone, and gunsmoke, and the man’s head went limp against his shoulder. Dreads spilled all over the place, and Keeli shifted him cautiously before turning to look at the devastation the man had wreaked.

Not Force sensitive.

Appeared out of thin air.

Keeli didn’t know what was going on, but the man had saved them, and he had to repay the debt. He could wonder at the strangeness of everything later.


	3. Chapter 3

Izuku woke in flashes. The air was thick and humid, and his brain felt like it had been put in a blender. Every inch of his body ached, and he felt like he was dying. His chest was on fire, but simultaneously cold, and something was on his wrists. There was noise in the back, some kind of male voices arguing in… English?

Yes, English, and the scrambled eggs standing in for his brain took far longer than they needed to translate the words.

_“Izuku,”_ Gremlin hissed, and Izuku realized he _wasn’t on his neck._ _“Izuku, if you do not_ ** _retrieve us,_** _I will_ ** _screech._** _”_

“... Ringu,” Izuku breathed, and tried to lift his hand to press against his eyes, but it was lashed to something. His  _ other _ wrist.

“Sir, this is overkill. He’s  _ clearly _ not a local, he’s just a  _ kid, _ the general---”

“The general is a  _ Jedi, _ and his intuition is better than ours,” an identical voice cut in, and Izuku crunched through the words, tried to take them apart and put them back together. “The kid is armed to the teeth.”

“He looks like a  _ seven year old, _ eight if we’re being  _ generous--- _ ”

“Kix,” the other said sharply, and Izuku blinked hard. “It’s just cuffs. They won’t hurt him.”

“They’ll scare the hell out of him, and I think we can handle an eight year old if he’s violent. We took the weapons off him.”

_ “Ringu,” _ Izuku repeated, more insistently, and the voices ground to a halt as Izuku’s eyes came into focus. Two men, big men, Polynesian, with curly hair, one blonde and one black, identical in every way, right down to the blue and white armor, though the paint patterns differed, and…

_ “Yes, it is a  _ **_problem,_ ** _ and we must  _ **_leave,_ ** _ ” _ Gremlin hissed, and Izuku slowly blinked.

“Ringu?” The man with the blonde hair echoed, and Izuku had just been eaten up and spat out by some horrifying eldritch being, but…

“Rex,” he said slowly, and the man’s eyes went a little wide.

“What?”

_ “My quirk is not supposed to take me to  _ **_other_ ** _ universes,” _ Izuku blurted, the Japanese flowing, and the man blinked again.

“Great. He doesn’t speak Basic,” he said irritably, and turned to the other. “Is the translation modulator up?”

“I speak Basic,” Izuku said, and the man that looked an  _ awful _ lot like a blonde Temuera Morrison turned back.

“Oh, you  _ do. _ What’s your name, kid, and what the  _ hell _ are you doing out here?” He demanded, and Izuku’s lips parted as his brain descended into pure white noise. “This is a warfront, you could have gotten killed.”

“I need the ring back,” Izuku said, and the man’s brows shot up.

“The thing that left your chest like  _ that? _ ” He asked, and pointed to Izuku’s… bare chest, which was covered in a large patch, like a bandage, and oh, gods, he didn’t even  _ want _ to think about the damage Gremlin had done this time.

“He was… panic. It was a panic. Please give it back,” Izuku said, the English he read and listened to so well halting on his lips, because he  _ practiced _ with Hizashi, and Asuma, but his written comprehension was a lot better.

“Here,” the other said, and pulled the ring out of the pouch, leaned over and strung it around Izuku’s neck. “What the hell happened, cad-- kid?”

Izuku’s brain was already spinning with  _ what _ had happened, because he didn’t have much information. Her quirk had clearly relied on the tarot cards, but  _ how? _ Did she permanently alter his quirk? Did she  _ destroy _ his quirk? Could she only interact with quirks, or did she just have  _ reality warping powers, _ and how had they not  _ heard _ of this woman? He was fairly certain she had interacted with his quirk, specifically, because he had to activate it to feel the effects, but…

His eyes caught on the trees around him, twisted and drooping, and the purple sky and haze. It was dark. It was  _ very _ dark, and he… He was thinking that was  _ Captain Rex, _ and the other had a hint of a tattoo in Aurebesh at his temple, meaning that was Kix, and Izuku was…

He knew this setting. He had  _ loved _ the Clone Wars, even though it was hard to get in Japan without censorship. There had been a lot of VPNs and illegal activity involved in getting the regular series, and he had devoured all seven seasons with an insatiable appetite until…

Well.

It was easier to watch shows about war when you weren’t in one.

In any case, he  _ knew _ this setting. He had cried about this arc, been utterly inconsolable for days. After watching it with a sense of unfocused rage, because the whole  _ point _ was the true tragedy of war, of how helpless it left you, he took a break from watching the series until Asuma coaxed him back into finishing it. He’d had to pause it many times, walk away and go do something else until he worked himself back up to finishing.

The hospital had felt like he felt watching Umbara, and if  _ this _ was Umbara…

_ “Where is Pong Krell?” _

**_“WE FEAST!”_ ** Gremlin screeched in glee, and Izuku wasn’t even going to tell him no.

* * *

The kid kept lapsing back into the other language Rex had never heard before, and it was becoming hard to keep up with him. He hadn’t even gotten his name out of him yet, and the kid was jumping between Basic and the other language that  _ definitely _ did not sound like a language that made sense, because it seemed to be a patchwork affair of different sounds and completely different uses of his tongue and rolling r’s and guttural work. If Rex didn’t know any better, and he probably didn’t, he’d think the kid was actually speaking  _ multiple _ languages. He didn’t even seem to mind the cuffs, really, but he  _ did _ mind that he couldn’t sit up, and Kix was having a hell of a time getting him to  _ calm down. _

“---but the theoretical  _ kakuritsu--- _ probability, this is just  _ so bad, _ we need to  _ go--- _ ” the kid was saying, and Rex dropped into a crouch and stared right into his green eyes.

“Kid,” he said, cutting the teenager off entirely, and the kid stared at him, panting and upset and going a mile a minute. “What is your name?”

“Izuku Midoriya,” the child replied promptly. “Or SlipStep.”

“Great. How did you get here?” Rex asked and the kid made a  _ noise, _ it was  _ too much. _

“It was… uh… do you have quirks?” The kid asked, a little desperately, and Rex blinked.

“I mean, I know some  _ weird _ brothers, but…”

“Oh, this just got  _ very _ complicated to explain,” the kid said, and raised his cuffed hands without a shred of thought given to his injured chest, like he was going to rub his face, and hissed in pain at the pull of his mangled, burnt flesh. “Need… cordial.”

“Kid, you’re in the middle of an active warzone, and the general thinks you’re a Separatist plant,” Rex said in irritation. “Uncomplicate it.”

The kid mouthed the words ‘uncomplicate it’, his face twisting in some unknown emotion, and then he groaned.

“Quirks. Superpowers?”

“... Is that what you call the Force from where you’re from?” Rex asked, and the kid actually  _ laughed. _

“There’s no Force. They’re uh… is your hair na-tur-ally blonde?” He asked, and Rex drew back slightly in offense.

“I don’t see why that’s relevant.”

“You’re a clone. If it’s naturally blonde, it’s called uh, what is it…”

“A  _ mutation? _ ” Rex asked, and the kid snapped.

_ “Yes,” _ he hissed. “Sorry. My English…  _ Basic _ is  _ good, _ very good, but my body is on fire and my brain are…  _ is _ sukaranburu eggu…. Uh…  _ scrambled eggs. _ ”

“Okay, what does different hair have to do with you being in the middle of a  _ shelling? _ ” Rex asked, and the kid let out a quiet noise of distress.

“Not different hair. My quirk… it’s a pocket di… dimension? Teleportation, I was where I was  _ meant _ to be, and then I was  _ not _ where I was supposed to be, a woman used  _ her _ quirk to get me out of the… picture? Idioms, ugh, anyways, she mangled my quirk, it hurt a  _ lot, _ and…”

The kid’s eyes suddenly went wide, and he tried to bolt up, and Kix moved immediately to pin him down by the shoulders, because the damage was  _ bad, _ all of his muscles in the torso were mangled, and he let out a strangled noise of pain.

_“Ojisan,”_ he gasped, and his eyes went wide and panicked. “My… _fuck,_ English, uh, what was… _shit,_ _bavod’u?_ ”

Rex stared at him in mute silence for a moment, because Mando’a was a closed language, and no one really knew the clones spoke it.

“Uncle,” he said, and the kid let out a groan of pain, rolled onto his side. “Kix, can you  _ please _ give the kid a painkiller?”

“I already  _ did, _ he shouldn’t even be feeling it,” Kix said, and the kid let out a harsh bark of laughter.

“Painkiller will not work for this,” he gasped, and seized up slightly, his eyes going glazed and unfocused before he let out a controlled breath and  _ forced _ his muscles to relax in a motion Rex knew  _ too well. _ “She ripped apart my DNA and put it back together t… to get at the quirk factor… I’m not  _ built _ for what she just did, I’m supposed to  _ stay anchored in one dimen-sion. _ It’s no… I  _ ran _ the numbers, my body isn’t built for that d… I mean I take myself  _ apart _ anyways, but putting myself back together is… My whole… It’s a  _ big _ quirk, very dangerous,  _ so _ dangerous, I need to  _ go back home, _ there’s a  _ war, _ I’m supposed to be keeping my section of Tokyo  _ clear--- _ I can’t… I can’t be here, I need a lab to  _ fix this, _ it was already broken on  _ I-Island, _ it can’t take m… more damage, I can’t, Gremlin,  _ shush--- _ ”

Something like horror hit Rex squarely in the chest, and Kix made a muffled noise of pure pain, turning away, because the weapons and armor had been concerning, of course they had, and the cloak was clearly shielded with something that was keeping them from reaching into the pockets to search it, but Rex hadn’t wanted to believe that a kid that looked like he was seven at  _ best _ was a child soldier. They didn’t even send out their seven year olds. Nine year olds were  _ pushing _ it. He wasn’t even done  _ growing. _

“Are you a soldier?” Rex asked, his voice a little strangled, and the kid took a deep breath from between his teeth in a hiss.

“I wasn’t… that wasn’t what was supposed to happen,” he said, and his voice cracked. “I need to find my  _ ojisan. _ Small-ish dark trans man, in a big hat, dreadlocks, red cloak like my gray one, bare arm, long mask covering his face, probably many g--- slugthrowers, spurs? Answers to Asuma or Snipe? Maybe Hazutashi?”

“You were the only one that hit down,” Rex said, and SlipStep looked like he was going to cry.

“I need a lab,” he said, and tried to push himself into a sitting position, but Kix eased him back down.

“Let the bacta work,” Kix said warningly. “We’re going to have to start marching soon, your muscles were all burned. You’re lucky we got you in time.”

“Captain!” A vod called, and Rex looked up to take in Fives’s approach. The ARC looked worried, stressed out. “The general wanted to know if the civvy was up.”

“He’s not fit to be moved yet,” Kix said and his hand tightened on SlipStep’s shoulder ever so slightly, which sent another jolt of unease into Rex’s gut. “Fives, meet SlipStep.”

SlipStep looked like he’d been struck in the face at the sight of Fives. A wounded noise made its way out of his throat, and Rex looked between the two of them wildly as Tup jogged up behind the other vod, Dogma on his heels as always. Another noise was punched out of SlipStep, and he reached up to clutch at the ring that had burned the life out of him.

“Nice to meet you, SlipStep,” Fives said cautiously. “Sir, the general?”

“Medic said he’s not fit to be moved,” Rex said, and something twisted in his gut.

“Oh, I can  _ certainly _ see him,” the kid almost  _ snarled, _ trying to sit up again, and Kix very firmly pushed him back down.

“I don’t know what you have against General Krell but we cannot actually treat you as a regular civilian if you pick a fight with him,” Rex said and rubbed at his eyes, figuring the abrasive general must have offended him  _ somehow _ on his own planet, if there was a war there. He wasn’t sure what the whole ‘dimensions’ thing was about, or  _ how _ his DNA had been ripped to shreds and put back together, but there was only one real war right now, and if this  _ kid _ was a soldier, then odds were he was in some kind of combat situation. “Look, what planet are you from? I don’t know  _ what _ kinda tech they’re developing there, but we can put you on a transport back.”

“That will not work,” the kid said flatly. “I told you, I need a  _ lab. _ ”

His eyes flicked back down to the ring around his neck, and his face twitched ever so slightly.

“I  _ am _ the transport.”

“Okay, that’s great, but we’re going to have to get a real debrief out of you, because you are  _ not _ cleared of suspicion. We’ll have to start from the top.”

_ “CT-7567!” _

General Krell’s booming voice made something inside Rex want to flinch, but he didn’t flinch. Instead, he went very still, and then slowly turned to face the angry Besalisk stomping up to the cluster of vode. Tup backed up ever so slightly, and Dogma hesitated before he took a step back with his batchmate, and Rex climbed to his feet so he could come to attention.

“General, sir,” Rex said, and swallowed hard as General Krell’s eyes swept over the odd mismatched group.

“I told you to report to me immediately when the spy woke up,” he snarled, and there was a muffled noise of offense from SlipStep.

“I’m not a  _ spy, _ ” he spat as he glared at Krell. “That is not even  _ remotely _ what I---”

“This is Izuku Midoriya. Sir,” Rex bit out, because… Well, SlipStep didn’t sound like a name he should be sharing. Something told him it was a bad idea. He had to follow the general’s orders, but…

After the march up the road, well.

Rex’s trust only went so far. And he kinda liked the kid. There was something about his face.

Dogma made a muffled noise of confusion, and Tup elbowed him with a hiss. General Krell ignored them, zeroing in on SlipStep, who was finally managing to bat Kix off enough to sit up with a tiny noise of pain.

“What are you doing in the middle of a battlefield?” The general demanded, and SlipStep  _ glared _ at him like he’d personally murdered his entire family.

**_“Go to hell,”_ ** he spat out, and Rex didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. “I’m not with the Separatists, if  _ that _ is what concerns you. I need my gear, please.”

“You are a  _ kid, _ and injured, and there’s shelling,” Rex snapped. “We’re not letting you wander off on your own.”

**_"That isn't what I need it for,"_ ** the kid said,  **_"I'm about to reunite him with the Force."_ **

“We don’t know that language,” Rex said, exasperated, and hoped to  _ hell _ Krell didn’t know it, either, because he had a feeling it was not complimentary.

"What are you doing out here?" Krell demanded, and the kid narrowed his eyes in a way that reminded Rex of a viper preparing to strike.

"There was an accident," he said after a long pause. "I am not meant to be here."

"Where  _ are _ you meant to be then?" The general asked, and the kid's eyes flicked up and down his body like he was calculating the fleshy bits.

"It does not matter, because I am here now," he said, and there was a flash of teeth in the dim light. "I need t---"

The kid broke off, and inhaled sharply, which was the only warning before his body…

Rex could not describe it as anything but like watching a screen glitch. SlipStep curled in on himself with a low moan of pain, and his body simply  _ glitched, _ like one of the 'cursed monitors' the bridge crews joked about, black and white intersecting like static, a smear of paint across a canvas, and there was some kind of  _ Other _ crackling, like a ship moaning moments before it broke. A scent filled the air, floral and sharp, and then bitter and like blood and ash and sweetly rotting, and the kid gritted his teeth even as his face fell to pieces and  _ moaned _ in agony, somewhere between a scream and a sob but deep in his chest.

The general was backing up. Tup and Dogma, jumpy shinies that they were, had their blasters lifted, and the cuffs dropped into SlipStep's lap as they simply phased through his hands.

There was a crackle, and then the kid was still, panting and wide eyed with pain. Blood trickled out of his nose, and something close to tears welled up.

"It reset," he said, and his voice was teetering on the edge of  _ shattering.  _ "I didn't tell him I loved him…"

And then he dropped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol krell is gonna die

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is a spite fic. I'm not invested in the high road today. Check back tomorrow.


End file.
